Clashing Shades of Red
by Emerald Tide
Summary: AU, Amuto genderbend, T for connotation. Being the babysitter for a boy still in elementary school – with pink hair, of all things – wasn't exactly the preferred way to spend a Saturday afternoon, especially for a seventeen-year-old girl with more useful things to do. Ikuma Tsukiyomi was no exception. One-shot.


**There have been Rimahiko genderbends, but I've never ever seen an Amuto one. My current hypotheses are either that too many "Amuto fans" are actually in love with Ikuto and dream about madly making love with him every night – and Amu is the representation of what they wish could happen to them, or that people just like the fact that Ikuto, the male, teases Amu, the female (because God forbid a female tease a male – it's just not cool! SEXIST PEOPLE). Because even if this ISN'T the first Amuto genderbend (it's probably not, but then it's one of the first), a lot of people have to have thought of this idea, and then rejected it instantly. Me? I'm following through. Even though in all honesty, I don't even like Amuto.**

Anyway, I tried to keep them as IC as possible, but it's a lot harder than it first seems. I mean, some stereotypes ARE actually true – girls are pretty vain (don't you dare deny it if you're a girl), and guys are too concerned with looking cool and keeping their pride (I think. I don't know this for sure because I'm not a guy). I mean, Amu IS too worried about how much time she spends in the bathroom. And okay, Ikuto doesn't try to be all heroic 24/7, but he does act guy-ish. So they're really, really, REALLY OOC. Please don't kill me. I tried.

Speaking of the gender switch, I tried to imagine a boy version of Amu and failed epically (discouraging, considering that I'm the author). What I came up with was Amu in a pink BOWL HAIRCUT. Seriously. Like, you know Rock Lee from Naruto? His hair dyed pink. It was totally pathetic. Of course, that led me to imagine all the SC characters as the opposite gender (and then all the other characters from various anime series), which, in the end, gave me an almost deadly nosebleed… and after all that, I still imagine Amuto (HIS NAME IS AMUTO DON'T COMMENT ON MY LACK OF CREATIVENESS) in a pink bowl haircut.

Anyway, enjoy the story. 

* * *

"Ikuma…"

"Utau, I said, no."

Ikuma reached over and snatched a strawberry from the fruit bowl. Utau twitched. "I am not paying for your mistakes!"

"You're a world-famous singer. You get, what, three million dollars a month? And you can't afford to pay for my saving a little girl's innocence?"

"I don't get three million dollars a month! Stop overestimating my money, I'm not a bank! And how is beating up a bunch of five-year-olds saving a little girl's innocence?"

Ikuma stopped eating her strawberry and looked up, eyes slightly narrowed. "Utau, are you crazy? They were b –"

"But –" Utau sighed. "Please, just do it, okay? I realize that I'm being unfair, but I already begged Sanjo to make a deal with that family and I can't just break it off now. You have to spend your Saturday afternoons there babysitting the kid, from two to four, until you get enough money to pay the debt. It's approximately the entire year. After it's all over, you'll have the money and the parents will be able to stay home – the reason they're not there is because the little sister has a dance class they have to attend. So it all works out."

"Except that I'm going to be sacrificing two precious hours of my free –" Ikuma broke off, realizing that it was pointless to argue. Utau didn't have a reputation as the most stubborn person on the planet for nothing. "Alright. Whatever. So when do I start?" She stuffed another strawberry into her mouth.

"Today." Utau handed her older sister a slip of paper. "Here's the address, go drive there yourself. I have a meeting with Sanjo in half an hour."

Ikuma sighed.

* * *

Ikuma grinned triumphantly. "I finally found it." Sure enough, the number on the house matched the number in her hand. She parked her car next to the sidewalk, got out and walked to the house, and rang the doorbell.

A dark-haired woman answered the door, holding the hand of a little girl with lighter, dirty blonde hair. A man with hair the same color as the girl's followed soon behind. "Oh, hello! I'm Midori Hinamori, and this is Tsumugu Hinamori. Are you the babysitter we hired?"

"Yeah." She tilted her head slightly at the girl. "Is this the one I'm babysitting?"

Midori laughed. "No, no. This is Ami, and she's the little sister with the dance class. You'll be taking care of Amuto. Hey, Amuto! Come down here!"

The first thing she noticed about the boy was that he was wearing a huge hat, blocking her view of his hair. From what she could see of his eyes, they were golden like his dad's. She tilted her head at him. "Hey, Amuto or whatever, why are you wearing a hat?"

Before he had a chance to reply, Ami spoke up. "He has pink hair!" she giggled. "See, see?" And she walked up to him and yanked the hat off.

His hair was pink. Unable to resist, Ikuma laughed. A slight flush creeping up his cheeks, Amuto narrowed his eyes and studied her unabashedly, golden irises moving up and down. "Are you my… babysitter?"

"I wouldn't be here otherwise."

"Alright, we'll be leaving now!" Midori said. They left, and a few moments later, they both heard the car drive away.

"Hey," Amuto muttered. Ikuma turned. "The bathroom's over there. Snacks are on the table in the kitchen. Eat whatever you want, as long as it's edible. Check for mold so I don't get in trouble." Ikuma raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "And don't bother me."

"Why do you have pink hair? Did you dye it?"

His face grew red. "W-why would I dye it pink?"

Suspicious. "Well, it's the only logical explanation. Your mom's hair is dark brown, your sister's is kind of a dull blonde, and your dad's is the same as your sister's. How did you end up with pink hair, of all things? And if that's really your natural color, why don't you just dye it brown or something?"

"It's none of your business!"

"So you dyed your hair pink?" She grinned wickedly. "This is priceless."

"My hair is just like this, and my mom won't let me use dye yet!" He stormed up the stairs, face clashing horribly with his hair color.

Ah, how she delighted in tormenting little boys.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Ikuma's phone ran out of battery, leaving her helpless to the suffocating feeling of boredom that automatically comes with being anywhere alone without entertainment. Well, technically, she wasn't alone, but she might as well have been – Amuto had not come down once since retreating to his room. Maybe she shouldn't have made fun of him so much, but it had just seemed fun at the time and although she usually thought out her actions before doing them, it had just been too hilarious.

Oh, well.

Five minutes later, she had devoured every strawberry in the house.

Another five minutes later, she had devoured all the chocolate in the house, even the ones that tasted like toothpaste – the Hinamori family had way too much food, Amuto had told her she could eat whatever she wanted, and she didn't care about getting fat (that was for her sister, who could and would send the media into hysterics if she so much as gained a pound between performances).

Another five minutes later, she had eaten every other snack that struck her fancy.

Yet another five frustrating minutes later, the all-too-familiar sense of ennui had sunk in completely, and she refused to put up with it for another hour and a half. Ikuma decided to go up to Amuto's room and see what he was doing; after all, she was supposed to be babysitting the kid anyway.

She went upstairs and quickly found his room. "Hey, I'm coming in." She entered just as two quiet notes from a song reached her ears.

In the next moment, Amuto turned off his phone, but she had already recognized the song that had been playing. How could she not? "Blue Moon? By Meikyuu Butterfly?" Meikyuu Butterfly was Utau Hoshina's stage name. Great, another fanboy to add to the millions.

"What do you want?"

"I got bored of what I was doing before. Entertain me."

His face went red. Again. She realized what he was thinking. "Geez, why are all kids nowadays so perverted? I entertained myself by using up my phone's battery – to play games, I mean – and eating up all your food. Entertain me in a way that does not bear the risk of producing more pink-haired brats. That's what I meant."

Redder. He needed to dye his hair, and fast; she had never seen any two natural colors clash with each other so badly. "I wasn't thinking that."

"You were. I can tell. Entertain me."

"I'm doing homework."

"If you somehow manage to make me less bored by four o'clock, I'll do your homework for you."

His eyes widened. "What?"

"Sure. You're in sixth grade, right? Should be a breeze, as long as you don't tell your parents."

"My teacher knows my handwriting."

"I'll tell you the answers."

Desperation overcame so-called "integrity" in a heartbeat. "Deal."

Another ten minutes later, Amuto Hinamori had finished his entire pile of homework.

* * *

Amuto leaned back in his chair, stretching blissfully. "Finally…"

"You still have to keep up your end of the deal."

"What do you want me to do?" Ikuma didn't miss the way he winced slightly at his own words. Little pervert.

"I don't know. Talk."

"How did you know I was playing Meikyuu Butterfly's songs? I thought I turned it off when you came in."

"I heard a little when I came in. I'm familiar with Meikyuu Butterfly."

"You mean you're familiar with her songs, right?"

Ikuma tilted her head to the side. "Hey, why do you care so much? Another fanboy whose greatest dream is to marry her?"

He scowled. "I like her music. That's it. I don't even know her."

"Well, you're not too far gone, at least. There are fans who have tried to blackmail her to reveal more information about herself just because they think she and her voice are pretty, you know. Luckily, none of them ever succeeded. Though, a few have seen what she really looks like." Underneath her casual tone, a coil of disgust lurked in her voice.

Selfish. Superficial. Shallow. The three S's that described the current state of the world.

"Hey, how do you know what she looks like, and that she has a fake appearance, and that people have tried to do those things to her? Do you stalk her or something?"

She had let too much slip. No use stressing about it now. "No, I don't stalk her. I have psychic powers connected directly to her. Right now, she's about ten or fifteen minutes into a meeting with one of her managers, Yukari Sanjo. They're discussing the new song that she's going to perform in about three days live in Tokyo, and they're debating on whether to introduce it as Glorious Sunshine or just plain old Sunshine. The discussion seems a little belated to me, but I guess that's the life of a pop star." Utau had told all of this to her before, saying that her manager wanted it to be Glorious Sunshine, but she thought that it sounded lame (even though the phrase was repeated many times in the song, meaning that her manager would probably win). "Glorious Sunshine's probably going to win. Oh, right," she added, "and I know Meikyuu Butterfly's real name, along with the exact lyrics and melody of Glorious Sunshine. You can't get all this information just by stalking."

"Are you just making this entire thing up?" he demanded. "How do you know all this stuff?"

"So you are a fanboy."

He blushed. Again. Ikuma sorely regretted that her phone didn't have any more battery; she would give almost anything now to be able to take a picture of the color combination, absolutely disastrous when pink was on top of red. She wondered if he knew what he looked like. "I'm just curious."

She didn't push it. "I can't trust you with the information. Why is your hair pink?"

"I told you, it's natural! I don't know why my entire family besides me has shades of brown!" Ikuma marveled at how easy it was to change the subject. "Why is your hair blue?"

"My dad's hair was blue, and my mom was blonde. I inherited the blue, my little sister inherited the blonde. That actually makes sense."

"You have a little sister too?"

"Yup. Her name is Utau Hoshina. She's in eighth grade, about the same age as Meikyuu Butterfly." For the first time, it occurred to her that Utau might kill her for giving a random kid so much information, so casually… but hey, she could just say it was revenge for getting her a babysitting job.

"I'm going to go eat something to eat –"

"Don't bother. I ate it all."

"Seriously? Even the strawberries?"

"Those were the first things I ate." A thought struck her. "You know, if you dyed your hair green and got embarrassed, you'd look like one."

(Insert awkward silence, in which Amuto's face effectively proves her point by growing strawberry-red, while he secretly thinks that yes, he does blush too much, although he can't control it, and yes, even looking like a strawberry would be better than having pink hair, though he'll go for a normal brown once he's allowed to use hair dye, thank you very much.)

Ikuma shook her head. "Never mind. Let's go play video games or something. You have them… right?"

"Duh."

* * *

It was time to go, and Ikuma actually kind of regretted it (it had been fun beating Amuto to a pulp in his own video games). As she collected her money from Tsumugu, she called to Amuto, "See you next week." As an afterthought, she said, "Pink and red clash so badly on your face that I can't even describe the sight properly, so stop being so embarrassed all the time."

He wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, so he used it as leverage. "See, even my babysitter thinks that I should dye my hair," he told his dad.

"No, she says that you should stop being embarrassed about your pink hair."

"Dad! Why won't you just let me dye my hair? It's humiliating!" Sure enough, his face was turning bright red again.

Ikuma smirked, waved, and left the house, vowing to charge her phone before she came here again next week.

* * *

On Friday, a day before Ikuma would come to babysit him for the second time, Amuto Hinamori searched up the song that Meikyuu Butterfly had sung two days ago at the live concert in Tokyo.

Glorious Sunshine.

* * *

**AUGH. NOOOOO. SO OOC. SO CLICHÉ. My excuse for Amuto is that he's a guy, and guy Amu does not act like girl Amu in any shape or form, no matter how much I try to make him do so. My excuse for Ikuma is that she was bored out of her mind and to death, because I really have no other excuse – the girl thing doesn't work either, because she was OOC even in girl form. So sorry if you felt like you wasted your time or anything. I guess this was more to plant the idea of a girl Ikuto and a boy Amu than to actually explore that idea. I might write a sequel or something, though I probably won't.**

I CANNOT believe I compared guy Amu to a strawberry. I hate it even more than Ikuto smirking, and yet… AUGH. I AM SUCH A HYPOCRITE.

But either way, how was it? I honestly want your feedback. I know it was OOC, don't tell me that. But if you pretend that the characters are OCs, how was the story in general? (And like I said before, don't comment on my lack of creativeness with Amuto's name.) You can tell me it was a bunch of stupid, random trash if you want. Honestly. I mean, as long as you tell me WHY it was stupid, random trash. Otherwise, I'd get really mad because what's the point of insulting the story without saying WHY it's being insulted? The author doesn't have any chance to improve. I admit that it's hard to hold back, though, when confronted with the most poorly-written story in the history of fanfiction (especially when you've written better stories yourself at the tender age of five. But whatever. Hopefully, my story's not like that).

I've only written one other fully-Amuto story other than this, and it was a dismal failure that you shouldn't read, so I'm not familiar with Amuto, so… please review!


End file.
